anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant assays - (Nov/10/2006 )

What's an anti-oxidant? Is it sth that prevent oxidation? And if I have a cell culture and a number of compounds that may be anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant, how can I test whether they have such effects or not?

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anti-oxidants are scavengers or quencher of the various of oxygen radicals; assays to test anti-oidative effects often work with oxidative stress, f.i. application of H2O2;

testing anti-inflammtory effects is much more complicated; about more than 40 cytokines are known; several are more or less secreted during a specific inflammation; you may focus on some prominent cytokines such as TNFalpha, IL-1, or IL-8;

there are numerous ELISA kits available to measure expression of cytokines as a reference to inflammation

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